'Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald' is all out of magic

There was a time when each new entry in the Harry Potter canon was a treat to be savored, each new detail a gift to be admired, each new character a friend to be loved.

But if Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the 2016 spinoff, raised the question of how much Wizarding World lore was too much Wizarding World lore, the new Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald definitively answers it: This. This is too much.

Crimes of Grindelwald picks up where the last one left off, more or less, though you only really need to recall the broad strokes for this one. The tl;dr version: It's the 1920s, "magizoologist" Newt (Eddie Redmayne) is our hero against the rise of Grindelwald (Johnny Depp), and a mistreated young man named Credence (Ezra Miller) is somehow key to this whole battle. Read more...